A peek into the past — More on the Cannon Ball Trail

Saturday

Jan 19, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Part of the road became Route 34

Dave Clarke

We’ve learned more about the Cannon Ball Trail, with an assist from SC columnist and Galva native John Sloan.In our Jan. 9 “Around Town” column we shared a January 1913 Star Courier story about the first meeting held in this area to establish part of a marked road — something new — which would enable “autoists,” as they were called, to travel from Kansas City to Chicago without having to ask directions. All they had to do was follow the white posts marked with a black ball, or cannon ball, which were eventually placed at one mile intervals.The big news in this area was that the new road was going to pass through Galva and Kewanee. From Quincy, the route generally followed the Burlington Railroad tracks.Sloan saw our column and used the Galva Public Library’s new Internet access to old issues of the Galva News, and sent us a link with more than six screens of past issues which carried any reference to the Cannon Ball Trail.John said library staff told him the past editions of the Galva News, Galva Standard and Galva Weekly News going back to 1879 were digitized from microfilms by a company that specializes in historic archiving. The site is equipped with a search tool which uses indexing so by inserting “cannon ball trail” in the search box, John instantly gathered dozens of articles printed in and after 1913 with everything from a mention to a full story about the trail. John’s help, however, eliminated what could have been several weeks of pouring over musty old newspapers in the library basement.The Cannon Ball Trail was a response to America’s rapid change from horse-drawn to motorized transportation in the early 1900s. An excerpt from “Galva History” by Sally Nelson reprinted in the May 26, 2004 Galva News tells about early efforts to promote better roads.“The Galva Farmers Institute had the credit of placing the county in the forefront (of improving roads). In the spring of 1906, the Galva Institute Road Improvement Association was organized in which farmers on various roads heading out of Galva agreed to do their proportionate share of work necessary to carry out the road improvement scheme of the association.” The goal was to “pull the cars out of the mud,” since all roads then were dirt-based.The 2004 article states that from 1900 to 1910 not more than 50 automobiles could be counted in Galva but by 1912, one year before the first area meeting on the Cannon Ball Trail, the number had more than doubled. Automobiles were suddenly a presence on the roads sometimes coming into conflict and contact with horse-drawn buggies and wagons who had previously had the roads to themselves.Cars were a new means to getting places and people were thinking of more places they wanted to go. Caravans of 20 or 30 cars would travel from town to town promoting what their communities had to offer or shopping at businesses in neighboring towns. In 1911, the speed limits of motorists in Illinois were 10 mph in business districts, 15 mph in residential areas, and 25 mph outside cities and towns. Even the fastest horses couldn’t beat that. During 1913 and 1914 issues of where the Cannon Ball Trail would go were addressed and resolved by the Illinois association meeting in Galesburg, Princeton and other towns along the proposed route. Each town had a representative and funding raised by assessing towns annually by population. Galva’s assessment was $75 a year. In the fall of 1913 one of the major disputes was decided when the association chose to take the route through Altona. Initially, the favored route went west of Galva 10 miles, then directly south to Oneida, then on to Wataga, Galesburg and so on. Altona residents, however, felt differently. They expended great effort and money on improving the road through their town and lobbied the association to come their way. In was finally decided the route would go seven miles west of Galva — to the present-day junction of Routes 34 and 17 — then turn south to Altona and then west along the Burlington Railroad tracks.A report on the annual meeting in the Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1915 edition of the Galva Standard reported that the first marker post on the Cannon Ball Trail had been set Dec. 2, 1914 at Quincy by Dr. R.N. Heflin, of Kewanee. Further down in the story we learn Dr. Heflin was not only Kewanee’s representative, he was also secretary-treasurer of the Illinois Division of the Cannon Ball Trail Association. Galva’s representative was W.S. McClintock. The story reports that major towns on the trail in this part of the state were to be Macomb, Galesburg, Kewanee and Princeton. A slew of smaller towns, such as Bowen, Plymouth, Altona, Neponset and Buda, were also listed. It was stated that cement posts painted white with a black ball (cannon ball) were installed every mile in rural areas while white strips had been painted on telephone poles and a black ball applied with a stencil in towns.By the early 1920s, we find the first mention of a system of concrete highways being considered. The Cannon Ball Trail Association, of course, thought they had the best route. Obviously, getting this new, paved road to pass through your town would mean cars could get there faster from greater distances and bring more people to your community.In the Thursday, July 13, 1922 edition of the Galva News we found a story about a meeting of the Illinois Division of the Cannon Ball Trail Association held in Galva. “A resolution was passed for the association to use its influence with state highway officials to have the state hard road follow the Cannon Ball Trail from Galva to Kewanee instead of going straight east of the city and then north to Kewanee as now planned.” It was reported that by the end of the year the trail would be paved from Aurora to Chicago and work on laying concrete between Galesburg and Oneida was “progressing rapidly.”We know now that the association’s influence was unsuccessful in getting the road, which eventually became U.S. Route 34, changed from an easterly path to follow the trail, which traveled up what is now Midland Road from Route 34 to Midland Country Club. There it turned east, back north and back east into Wethersfield and Kewanee.The digital search yielded two tidbits which may support the Midland connection. A “for sale” item in the Thursday, May 5, 1921 Galva News reads “Soy beans (two words, not one) to plant with your corn. R.I. Parks on the Cannon Ball Trail one mile south of Midland.” In the Sept. 29, 1921 Galva News we read that “Work on dragging the Cannon Ball Trail from Kewanee to Midland Country Club was completed Friday. Saturday morning, a force of men started oiling this stretch of highway.”Midland Country Club was a newly built center of social and recreational activiity back then and a busy stop on the interurban electric railway between Kewanee and Galva, so putting that destination on the trail would have made sense.On Dec. 20, 1923, however, the Galva News reported “A great national highway from Chicago to El Paso, Texas, may pass through Galva, according to the tentative advance sheet published by the chief of the U.S. Bureau of Roads.” One of several proposed roads, it was to be part of the federal aid highway system which would include 180,000 miles of the most important roads in the United States, so located to form a network of main interstate and intercounty roads. “The system shows a great highway from Chicago to Texas, which apparently follows the Cannon Ball Trail through Kewanee, Galva, Galesburg and Burlington, then through Kansas City to El Paso.”Thus began the transition of the Cannon Ball Trail into what we know today as U.S. Route 34.Now, about the old photograph which accompanies this column. Our farm, across from Black Hawk College East Campus, lies on what was once a section of U.S. 34. I can remember as a child hearing and seeing large semis and a constant stream of cars going by on what was then a very busy highway, to a “Y” just east of our farm where the road split, one leg north of Kewanee, the other south to Peoria, joining what would later be designated Illinois Route 78. In 1959-60, Route 34 was redirected to the north where it is today, which left quiet our little piece of the old highway, now Black Hawk Road.While going through some oversized old negatives at the farm the other day I found one that appears to be a crew of men pouring the concrete westward to build Route 34 just west of our mailbox. My grandparents were newlyweds living on the farm in the 1920s and may have taken the shot with an early camera. Using this new information from the old Galva News’ I would say the road was built and photo taken in 1924 or 1925.There was no photo with the nearly 90-year-old negative, which was very thin and blurry. Our friend, Larry Flannery, has a scanner which can download oversized negatives and made a large print for our first real look at the photograph. He also produced a digital image for the newspaper. It’s grainy and a little hard to make out, but it’s historically significant so we’re printing it in hopes that readers can make out the paver with a ribbon of newly poured concrete behind it and an umbrella over the operator indicating it was probably summer.The leveler which smoothed off the concrete appears to be on the far right. The road bank at the left is now much closer to the road, the soil having shifted down and outward over the years.Retired Kewanee Township Road Commissioner Bob Hepner, now in his 80s, said what appears to be a Model T Ford pickup in front of the paver appears to be equipped with a tank which he said was used to carry water to be used in the machine to make the concrete. As a young boy, he recalls seeing a similar machine being used to install the first concrete on Route 78 north of Kewanee, where he grew up.It’s amazing after nearly 100 years to not only read first-hand about how one of the major roads in our area was built, but also see (sort of) it being done.